Five ways to power the UK that are far better than Hinkley Point

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It faces formidable commercial, technical and legal obstacles to getting built remotely on time or budget, or indeed at all. And while the rest of the world is accelerating ahead with the smart energy systems of the 21st century, Hinkley is a throwback to the nuclear age of the 20th.

But the French government, which majority-owns Hinkley’s builders EDF, wants to preserve its national nuclear industry. The UK government, blinded by the dazzle of a mega-project, is happy to let its citizens pick up the bill.

It has taken almost a decade to get to this point. In 2007, EDF said British Christmas turkeys would be being roasted with its nuclear electricity in 2017. The earliest possible switch-on now is 2026, another decade away.

What is scary is that reaching the final decision to go ahead was the easy bit. Now they have to deliver a giant and fiendishly complex construction project, described by one nuclear engineer as like “building a cathedral within a cathedral”, that is, “unconstructable”.

EDF has never managed to build the types of reactors intended for Hinkley. Its two attempts so far, in France and Finland, remain many years behind schedule and many billions over budget. Perhaps they are hoping for third time lucky.

Yet the commercial foundations for this engineering miracle are incredibly shaky. EDF is on the ropes financially and had to be given a €3bn bailout in April by the French government. That may well be challenged under EU state aid rules, which would join an ongoing state aid legal case brought by Austria against UK subsidies for Hinkley.

It gets worse. The French Financial Markets Authority raided EDF this month, investigating allegations that it misrepresented the cost of Hinkley and other projects. Banks and other financial institutions already loathed the Hinkley plan, with EDF warned of further credit rating downgrades if it goes ahead, making its huge debt more expensive to maintain.

The government is adamant that Hinkley, which could provide 7% of the UK’s electricity, is a vital part of a secure low-carbon future. But a barrage of recent reports from serious players say the opposite. The future is not gigantic centralised energy plants, but widespread networks of renewable energy and storage, interconnected across the continent, bolstered by energy efficiency measures and the smart management of demand.

EDF had said its decision on Hinkley would be made in September at the earliest. So why the sudden rush, after so many years of delay? The company’s announcement that the decision was being brought forward came on the evening after Theresa May, keen to signal post-Brexit Britain remains open for business, had met Francois Hollande for talks. For Hinkley, as with Brexit itself, political chicanery has triumphed over economic reality.